Having zeroed in on this season’s team, I want to take a step back and consider Josh Pastner’s career and specifically what his example may be able to tell us about how college basketball is customarily narrated. (Something like a person facing backward on a train and describing the terrain as it goes by with feigned “I knew this was coming” omniscience. But I’m getting ahead of myself.) Continue reading →

Speaking at the IMG Intercollegiate Athletics Forum in New York yesterday, NCAA president Mark Emmert answered a question about the criticism that’s been directed his way by my ESPN colleague Jay Bilas. “I don’t like the ad hominem attacks,” Emmert said, to which Jay immediately responded: “They’re not attacks. The criticism is fair, and right on.”

As Jay himself is wont to say, reasonable people can differ on the precise point at which substantive criticism becomes an exercise in ad hominem polemic. For Emmert, that point was apparently reached earlier this year when Jay called the NCAA’s head man “an absentee president.” Personally I think that’s self-evidently an assessment of performance rather than a prejudicial slander — pallid grounds for a duel, if you ask me. Continue reading →

James H. Smart helped start the Big Ten, possibly because he was tired of Purdue being called a mid-major.

Yesterday at Insider I ranked my top five mid-majors, and in response I heard back from some readers who felt that the hardiest of hoops perennials — what’s a mid-major? — perhaps merits rehashing in this era of wanton realignment. Fair enough. What’s a mid-major?

A mid-major is a team from any conference except the ACC, American, Big 12, Big East, Big Ten, Pac-12, or SEC. Continue reading →

Marshall Henderson attempted 23 threes in 36 minutes in Mississippi’s 115-105 overtime loss to Oregon yesterday. Henderson fared quite well against the Ducks, sinking 10 of those attempts and scoring 39 points, but it was not quite enough for the Rebels to win at home against a top-15 opponent. Continue reading →

Haith was an instant positive energy on the sidelines and on the practice court. Practices were higher intensity and more structured. Film sessions became analytic. The strength and conditioning program went from a team perspective under [Mike] Anderson to an individualized approach under Haith.

Take the three-point shot. Left to their own devices, players would shoot threes on occasion, but some coaches decree that their teams not do that. Depending on the team, that decree can either be a no-brainer or highly intrusive.

So, in the tradition of Drew Cannon’s Easy Bubble Solver, I’m pleased to unveil the Easy Intrusive Coach Detector, a fool-proof way to determine whether your head coach is carrying this whole authority thing to an extreme and actively harming the performance of his offense. It’s fast, simple, and effective. Continue reading →